Imagine a game of sporting clays without the hassle of a clipboard and pencil.
As you walk up to the cage, you don’t have to search for a place to rest the clipboard that holds the score sheet. Where should I put it? Lean it against the gun rack? Balance it on the railing? Leave it in the cart and remember the scores to write down later? Hand it off to a friend who hands it to a friend and so on until eventually someone in the squad ends up dealing with the clunky thing?
This is the final installment in our three-part series, The Triple Crown of Sporting Clays Resorts. In the first installment, Shotgun Life Editor, Deb McKown wrote about The Greenbrier. The second installment brought us to The Homestead. To wrap it up, Deb now writes about the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort.
For most people, The Homestead resort conjures up visions of golf, tennis, horseback riding and a romantic evening of four-star cuisine.
Part 1: The Greenbrier
You know a road trip is going be great when, on the first leg of it, Johnny Cash comes on the radio and sings “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”
Your SUV is packed with sporting clays guns, ammo and shooting gear and Cash’s renegade ballad sends a shiver down your spine. You wonder, Does it really get any better than this?
For us, the answer would be a resounding yes.
The opportunity to shoot sporting clays on hallow ground doesn’t present itself that often, but you can do it in the area of Manassas, Virginia where the battles of Bull Run were fought.
Depending on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you’re standing, it’s called either the First and Second Battle of Bull Run (as it’s known in the North) or the First Battle and Second Battle of Manassas (the Southern name for it). The first battle took placed July 21, 1861 while the second, larger battle was fought August 28-30, 1862.
Three-hundred targets, three sporting clays courses, 48 hours.
The eight of us piled into three cars to meet the challenge.
We left from Greater Baltimore on Friday morning. The group split up according to breakfast habits. Us four, not real big on lumberjack specials, decided to sleep the extra 30 minutes and grab a last-minute coffee at home.
Unless you’re in a squad with highly ranked shooters who consider 24 out of 25 a miserable failure, skeet is a great sport for mixing, mingling and shooting.
Cheerful support, gratuitous advice and a few off-color jokes are the earmarks of a happy day of casual shooting on the skeet field…made all the better by a perfect 25.
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